Under Armour attributes its explosive growth to these 3 athletes

Steph Curry's shoe line is helping Under Armour's revenues explode.
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Under Armour continues to grow at a wild pace. On Thursday the company reported a 29% growth in revenues over the same period last year, leading to a 7.3% jump in the company's stock price.

This incredible growth has CEO Kevin Plank excited, and in a conference call about the earnings on Thursday he thanked three huge contributors who didn't even work for the company.

The biggest growth categories for Under Armour recently have been in three areas: golf-related items, women's products, and basketball shoes and apparel. Not incidentally, these correlate with the subjects of Plank's praise: Jordan Spieth, Misty Copeland, and Stephen Curry.

"Over the past year, three Under Armour athletes have transcended their sports and become known by just their first names, Stephen, Misty, and Jordan," Plank said. "These three athletes have combined to teach us one incredibly valuable lesson that we need to think bigger."

One of Under Armour's recent initiatives has been in basketball apparel and especially shoes. Plank said Curry was driving this section of the business faster than expected.

"This brand heat is driving huge amounts of incremental traffic to our e-commerce platform across the globe, with our basketball traffic up more than 300% year-over-year," Plank said.

Misty Copeland.
Screenshot / Youtube

The basketball-shoe business is dominated by Nike, with brands affiliated with Michael Jordan and LeBron James drawing massive revenues. But Under Armour is capitalizing on Curry's success in this year's NBA Finals with the Curry One shoe.

"The Curry One shoe was a great success with our e-commerce site as we continue to gain share in key footwear categories with our wholesale partners," Plank said. Revenue for the footwear business increased 40% compared with the same quarter last year, to $154 million.

Copeland, who recently became the first black woman to be named principal ballerina at the prestigious American Ballet Theater, drove an increase in sales of women's apparel.

The golfer, Spieth, this year won his first two major championships, the Masters and the US Open, and came close to winning his third this past week at the British Open in Scotland. Plank put it this way in the call:

In just a sport of golf in the last two years our revenues have more than doubled. We're seeing key category growth throughout the rest of the year — things like on our website — our playoff polos are a number one item at our Brand House and our e-commerce site. The business is basically up everywhere, where we have our key assets which is the one thing which led us the ability to find the right asset with Jordan, that we're leading the way out there it's been absolute killing home run for us too.

Just last year, Under Armour passed Adidas as the second-largest sportswear company in the US and the company has continued to grow globally. In the long run, it seems to be trying to leverage its three huge superstars into taking on the behemoth in the industry, Nike.